Blog

The 5 Most Vital Metrics to Observe Your Instagram Development

Find insights on Instagram

It turns out that Facebook, who bought Instagram in 2012 for $ 1,000,000,000, was a really, really, REALLY good idea.

In 2019, Instagram generated advertising revenue of $ 20 billion. Numbers like these make savvy marketers think – it's time for me to take this platform seriously.

If you are new to the Instagram train with 120.7 million users or have not built up a following but have an existing profile, do not let anyone tell you that it is too late. As long as users' attention is on the app, it's never too late to get started.

All you need to do is collect different metrics than people who have millions of followers in the early years of Instagram. And luckily, Instagram made it easy for you to track this.

Instagram’s earnings come from its advertisers. The better the profiles of their advertisers in the app (impressions, engagement, conversions), the more money these advertisers spend. This is why Instagram has integrated all the necessary metrics into its "insights", which can be found in every company profile.

Simply click on the three horizontal stacked lines (also known as hamburgers) at the top right of your app screen when you are in your profile, then click on "Insights" to get to your metrics.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Find insights on Instagram

Now that you know where to find these metrics, let's go over the 5 most important metrics to track your Instagram growth.

# 1: Follower Count

Okay, duh – right? But let's just explain WHY it is so important to keep track of your followers when you expand your Instagram profile. The main reason is that you need to know where to start. The second reason is that you need to know where you are going. That is the be-all and end-all of a great digital marketing strategy.

For example, do you start with 1,000 followers and want to grow to 50,000 in 6 months?

Great goal, and now you can work backwards to say:

We need 8,167 new followers per month to reach our goal of 50,000 in 6 months (50,000-1,000 divided by 6). With this goal in hand, you can start looking at the following metrics related to that goal.

# 2: impressions

Impressions are an important measure of Instagram's growth because they tell you how often your posts have been viewed. What's cool about impressions is that they go beyond a metric like engagement because they can tell you how many users saw your posts, even if they didn't interact with them.

These are people in the first phase of the customer value journey, awareness. This is the stage where people learn about your business but have not necessarily interacted with you. They don't like your posts, don't comment on them or write anything to you – they just rummage around to see what you're all about.

Impressions are a necessary Instagram metric to keep track of as they tell you how many people are reaching your posts. As this number increases, you know you are doing something right. If it decreases, you've done something that is too niche in your posts.

Remember, impressions from tracking are the number of visitors to your site. They will tell you how many times your posts have been viewed, and this number includes people who have viewed your posts multiple times. On the other hand, the range is like a unique visitor, which we will explain below.

Get free access to DigitalMarketer's training library

# 3: Reach

The reach of your Instagram profile is the number of unique profiles that your posts have seen. This number is less than your impressions because it increases by one each time someone visits your profile, even if they visit it ten times.

As mentioned above, this corresponds to the unique visitors to your website. It's a good metric to see how many people are looking at your profile. And just like with impressions: the more eyes you can cast on your profile, the more users will notice your brand. From there, you want to lead them to phase 2 of the Customer Value Journey, Engage, where they interact with your content via likes, comments, releases, storage and DMs.

# 4: engagement

A higher engagement rate is critical to your Instagram marketing strategy as it tells the Instagram algorithm that your content is something people want to see. You don't want 100,000 followers and 10 likes in your posts. The algorithm assumes that your target group doesn't care about your content and that they don't prefer it on their Discover page or in their followers' feeds.

As your Instagram fan base grows, you want your engagement to grow too. Engagement is:

These are important not only for the algorithm, but also for people. People want to see others appreciate your content enough to like and comment on it. The more people like your contribution, the more likely you are to move someone from the awareness phase to the CVJ engagement phase.

Your engagement will also be an important indicator of what content is best suited for your audience. If one post gets 100 likes and another post 500 likes, you are up to something. You want to track your preferences and comments on each post and see which posts encourage engagement.

You also want to keep track of the number of times a post was saved. With a saved post, an Instagram user can return to the post at another time via the "Saved" tab in their profile. Users who save their posts will pretty much appear in front of your shop door with a neon sign saying "PLEASE MAKE MORE CONTENT LIKE THIS!".

# 5: Instagram story views

The last, but not least, important metric to track your Instagram growth is your story views. Your story views are less than the number of people who follow you, and are likely to be close to the engagement you get for each post (likes, comments, and shares together).

These views show you how many people have seen your 24-hour Instagram story. They are an essential sign of the longevity of your profile. When people are ready to watch your stories, they care about the content you publish.

Your Instagram story views count the number of people who saw your story. However, you can also find other key figures such as the number of:

  • Actions from your story
  • Profile visits
  • To reach
  • Impressions
  • Follows
  • navigation
    • People who focus on your story
    • People who advance your story
    • People who jump to the next story
    • People who leave your story

Yes, you can find all of these metrics for each Instagram story you publish by swiping up at the bottom of the screen when playing your story (in your profile). You want to see how many people have seen your stories over and over again (to advance your story) to see if your content works well. If you see a large number of people leaving your story, your followers are not interested in the content you post. Try again.

And that's all we can do as a marketer. Try it again.

We pay attention to key figures so that we know when we are doing better than expected or worse. If so, we'll try again.

Track these metrics to improve your Instagram growth. This platform won't go anywhere anytime soon.

Exploit.

Get free access to DigitalMarketer's training library